


taraxacum

by theglitterati



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Chronic Illness, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Pining Sakusa Kiyoomi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29446071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theglitterati/pseuds/theglitterati
Summary: Sakusa Kiyoomi is fifteen years old when he is diagnosed with chronic Hanahaki disease.It only takes him seven years to do something about it.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 24
Kudos: 205
Collections: ♧SakuAtsu Fics♧





	taraxacum

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to Andie and Lily for beta-ing, and to RT for her medical expertise :)
> 
> Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Sakusa Kiyoomi is fifteen, inexperienced and coltish on long, still-growing legs, when he is sent to Youth Camp for the first time with his cousin. He sticks to Motoya like glue, as he has done since they started at Itachiyama; it’s easier than talking to new people, easier than being alone. But on the first morning, they’re split into groups, and Motoya is whisked away from him.

His group has five other first years. He’s told names, gives his own, but he’s so nervous they slip right out. All but the setter. Miya Atsumu, sixteen, from Hyogo. He’s tall, for a setter, and his attitude makes him taller. Kiyoomi’s house is twenty minutes away; Atsumu’s might as well be on the other side of the planet, but he strolls around the gym like it’s his living room. He’s a bottle blond, his hair a nasty shade of yellow. He mentions he has a twin. Kiyoomi thinks he might hate him.

Until he hits his sets. He idolizes Iizuna Tsukasa, but Atsumu’s better. Kiyoomi’s never had to do so little work to score. He smashes the ball down past the blockers and off the libero’s wrist. Atsumu says, “Nice kill, Kiyoomi-kun.” Kiyoomi offers the biggest smile he can muster, which is small.

Their other hitter is unimpressed. So-and-so from Hokkaido isn’t having much luck with Atsumu’s sets. He complains after each one, too high, too fast, too low, too slow.

Atsumu takes the first few in stride, but after four blocked hits, he asks Hokkaido loudly, “Did ya ever think _you_ might be the problem?”

“What?”

“My sets are good,” Atsumu clarifies. “Yer not.”

Hokkaido goes comically red in the face, like steam might come out his nose. “What the fuck did you say?”

“Ugh, yer as dumb as ya are bad at volleyball. Kiyoomi-kun.” Atsumu waves a hand in Kiyoomi’s face. “Tell him my sets are fine.”

Hokkaido gives Kiyoomi a look, like, _can you believe this guy?_

Kiyoomi stares at the floor and says, “His sets are good.” 

Atsumu smirks. “You’re both assholes,” Hokkaido says.

He sees Atsumu with a teammate later — Ojiro Aran, Kiyoomi’s seen him in magazines. He’s lecturing Atsumu, telling him he needs to be nicer or he’ll get kicked out. Atsumu doesn’t seem to be listening.

Kiyoomi coughs.

The groups are rotated after the first day, and Kiyoomi doesn’t talk to him again, doesn’t think of him again once camp is over and he’s back to classes and practices and qualifiers for Nationals. He gets through all three and steps back on the orange court that summer. Itachiyama wins and wins until the final round, when a familiar head of split-ends fixes his gaze on Kiyoomi through the net.

“Long time no see, Kiyoomi-kun. Sorry I gotta crush ya today.” Atsumu’s cocky as ever, tanned arms crossed over his chest. A hand reaches out and pinches one. “Ow, fuck off, ‘Samu.”

Ah, the twin. “Don’t say stuff like that. It’s lame.” Atsumu crows at him, turning his attention away from Kiyoomi.

Inarizaki doesn’t crush them; actually, it’s the other way around, Itachiyama winning in four sets that don’t go past twenty-five points. Atsumu’s sets are solid, and his serves are the stuff of nightmares, but they’re not enough. Itachiyama gets the gold. Kiyoomi smiles a little bigger.

They shake hands, Atsumu’s wet with tears from wiping his face. His nose is running down over his lip. “Good game, Kiyoomi-kun, I’m gonna destroy ya next time.” He looks like a toddler two minutes from a tantrum.

Kiyoomi opens his mouth (to say what, he’ll never remember) and doubles over, coughing hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs. Atsumu recoils, _ew, ya tryin’ to infect me?_ but Kiyoomi’s not sick, hasn’t so much as sniffled in months. Motoya runs to his side, but he’s okay, straightening up with an ache in his chest and— something in his mouth.

Mumbling, he excuses himself, shaking Motoya off as he hurries to the bathroom. He locks himself in a stall, holds out a hand, and, slightly disgusted, spits into it.

It comes out gummy and wet but intact. A leaf.

“It’s chronic,” the doctor says, when he returns with the CT scans of Kiyoomi’s chest, of the _thing_ inside his chest. He is still growing, and now there is something growing inside of him.

His parents make relieved noises. Kiyoomi sits quietly.

There are two known forms of Hanahaki disease: acute and chronic. Acute will kill you in six months. With chronic, you get more time — years, the doctor tells him. He lays out options: drugs, traditional medicine, acupuncture, and surgery, the only cure — but it will snuff you out in the end just the same.

He clips the scans to the wall for Kiyoomi to see, a perverse art show: here are the roots, here are the buds. Lines bisect Kiyoomi’s heart and lungs on the film, tangle around his esophagus. There’s a tight knot of them below his breastbone, where he has pain at night.

“Do you know who she is, Kiyoomi-kun?” the doctor asks, not unkindly. Kiyoomi nods.

“Good. Very good.” He turns back to Kiyoomi’s parents, like he isn’t there. “At his age, the best thing is for him to tell the girl. We can get it out of the way, figure out if there’s a chance she’ll return his feelings. If there is, great. If not, then the sooner he has surgery, the better.”

“No.”

The adults blink at him. “Sorry?”

“No,” Kiyoomi says again. “I’m not going to tell— her.”

“Straight to the surgery, then. That’s a fine option, though it never hurts to—”

“I’m not having surgery, either.”

“Kiyoomi.” His father is frowning. “We can talk about this at home.” His meaning is clear: _don’t embarrass us._

“Don’t worry, this is a common reaction,” the doctor explains. “They’re young, they don’t want to lose their first love. Most patients change their minds.”

Kiyoomi stares at the lines in the scans. The roots look like split ends.

He won’t change his mind.

He goes to school and practice and the doctor and nowhere else. He’s permanently grounded while his parents figure out what to do with him. They can’t force him to have the surgery, since his life is not actively in danger, nor can they pry Atsumu’s name from his mouth. It’s a shock to them, their perfect son disobeying them. It’s a shock to him, too; he never saw himself as the rebellious type, but he never had anything to rebel against before. Turns out, he’s good at it.

“At least tell us what flower it is,” they plead. “We know you know.” Kiyoomi locks the bathroom door every time he coughs up a leaf, a clump of petals. There hasn’t been a full flower yet, but it’s not far off. He flushes the evidence.

He tells no one outside his family but Motoya, who’s not really outside his family, and his coach. To keep any stray leaves hidden, he wears a mask everywhere but the court. Rumours spread that he’s a germaphobe and he encourages them. He gives up trying to make friends, trying to please people, until they start calling him cocky and cold. It’s funny: loving Atsumu makes Kiyoomi more like him.

He doesn’t question his choice to keep his secret, not when his parents threaten to take volleyball from him (they can’t, or he’ll lose his scholarship, thank god), not when the drugs the doctor gives him for the throat aches exhaust him. Not when he opens an issue of _Monthly Volleyball_ to an editorial on the Miya twins and nearly chokes.

He slips into the bathroom, hoping no one will hear, and leans over the sink. It’s stuck in his throat; when coughing doesn’t bring it up, he reaches into his mouth and drags it out.

A dandelion in full bloom.

たんぽぽ, _tanpopo,_ is the Japanese word for the flower he disgorges. It doesn’t mean anything special. The English, _dandelion,_ is more evocative; it’s from the French, for _lion’s tooth._ Kiyoomi likes this, thinks it’s poetic, but the French now call it _pissenlit._ It translates to _piss the bed,_ because of the plant’s diuretic effects. Kiyoomi knows them all too well.

He does Internet searches, clearing his history after, and finds pictures of bright yellow flowers, fields of golden blooms, right next to articles on how to best kill them. Dandelions are relentless, will grow anywhere. They’re a good source of nutrition, especially, historically, for the poor, which got them their bad reputation. They are double-edged swords made of chloroplasts instead of steel. Kiyoomi feels dirty; all his useless body can grow is a weed.

He is invited back to Youth Camp the following year, the last year he is eligible. Motoya is by his side again, but there are new faces, too: a setter from Miyagi, a boy from Nagoya who looks like a bird. Atsumu, it goes without saying, is back, too, bleeding into the edges of Kiyoomi’s vision even when he’s not looking at him.

It’s the first time he’s seen him since the Hanahaki diagnosis. Kiyoomi half-expected to cough up flowers the size of dinner plates, or for Atsumu to start levitating, but he’s still just a boy, same straw-dry hair, same arrogance. 

“Heya, Omi-kun.” Kiyoomi’s not sure where the first character of his name has disappeared to. “Itachiyama made Nationals again, right? We’re not gonna lose this time.”

Kiyoomi wonders if he should be shyer around Atsumu, but dying has made him less afraid. How can Atsumu hurt him in any way he hasn’t already? “It’s sweet, that you think that,” he says. Atsumu balks, flapping his arms, and Kiyoomi thinks how nice it would be to kiss him. Then he stomps away, to ask Kageyama how the hell his team took down Ushijima Wakatoshi.

He doesn’t consider telling him once. For all the shit he gives people on the court, Atsumu’s well-liked. Popular even, especially with the girls who wander over from their own training camp, though Kiyoomi notes Atsumu seems more interested in the boys. Kiyoomi doesn’t mind. Atsumu’s got a big head; maybe this is the best way to admire him, staying in the shadows and spitting up bouquets. Only Kiyoomi can love him like that.

They don’t play each other again in high school, and Itachiyama doesn’t win Nationals again, though Inarizaki does in their third year. Kiyoomi watches from the sidelines.

Neither of them makes the national youth team. Atsumu enters the V. League, gets a starting spot on a division two team, and Kiyoomi goes to college. He and his parents have finally come to a détante, and he wants to make them happy. It’s a good back-up plan, too. With his health, he may need an office job someday.

His doctor is still giving him years, but with every new scan of his chest the plant covers more and more of his heart. There are leaves visible inside him on the latest one; now that Kiyoomi is of age, the doctor can’t reveal the genus to his parents.

Still, he presses. “Yellow was one of your high school’s colours, was it not?”

Kiyoomi shrugs. Different yellow.

There are new symptoms, in addition to the chest pains and sore throats: dry mouth, insomnia, and depression, the one he’s least willing to accept. Is his shortened lifespan not bad enough without him having to feel like he wants to die? The doctor patiently, and then impatiently, reminds him surgery would solve all of his problems, but five years after his diagnosis, Kiyoomi’s answer is still a resounding _no._ He doesn’t explain. He doesn’t have to.

Like any chronic illness, his Hanahaki is sometimes debilitating. He misses games, has a few days every year when his chest hurts so badly he can’t get out of bed. A lot of the time, though, it’s just annoying. How convenient it would be, he thinks, to not be in love.

Curative methods waived, the doctor prescribes him palliative care. This, Kiyoomi tries, for the sake of his volleyball career. Acupuncture for the pain, melatonin for the insomnia. A numbing agent for his ragged throat. Therapy for the depression.

He tried therapy in high school because his parents forced him to. He sat for one hour in a psychiatrist’s office and refused to say a word, even when her questions were benign. He was scared, afraid of being tricked into revealing Atsumu’s name, not believing her when she said she wouldn’t tell his parents. He was right not to: she told them about his silence, and he never went back.

This time, to accommodate his busy schedule, it’s an online group — not one of the nutty conspiracy ones that try to hash out the origins of Hanahaki (the disease first appeared in Japan in the eighties, and everything from environmental destruction to sex before marriage to aliens has been blamed) but a closed group for those with official diagnoses. 

Kiyoomi quickly realizes it’s not for him. The people are nice, and, at first, it’s a breath of fresh air to listen to others talk about the problem he has like they’re normal: awkward explanations for repeated bathroom visits, a funny aversion to eating salads. But they have different conceptions of the disease. Everyone’s either looking for advice on confessions, even the middle-aged men, or comparing surgery plans, prices, and recovery methods. They see Hanahaki as something to be rid of; Kiyoomi wants to live with it, and his reticence to take control of the disease, to grab it by the neck and strangle it, doesn’t make him many friends.

He lets them talk him into one thing, though, before he quits. There’s a girl in one of his classes who keeps making eyes at him, sitting next to him and making conversation, although Kiyoomi can admit that he’s really no fun to talk to. The documentation on whether or not falling in love with someone else will cure you is dubious; claims have been made, but there are so few people with Hanahaki, and, once the surgery was standardized, no one wanted to bother with falling in love a second time. But Kiyoomi is curious. He’s twenty-one and he’s never touched anyone, and it’s not like Atsumu’s offering.

He takes the girl on two dates, the second of which ends in her dorm room, on her bed. She’s sweet and pretty and happy to take the lead, pushing him down on his back. Kiyoomi’s body is interested — though he does feel a little grossed out touching someone else so intimately. We are the masks we wear, literally in this case, and Kiyoomi is becoming a germaphobe — but his mind is elsewhere. Not necessarily on Atsumu, though his honeyed eyes and broad shoulders make an appearance in his thoughts. Just someplace else. The girl notices, and there is no third date.

By the end of his four years of university, Kiyoomi has run into Atsumu exactly once: at the Kurowashiki tournament, in which Kiyoomi’s college team lost to the Adlers. It was notable only in that Kiyoomi spent the rest of the night bent over the toilet in his thankfully private dorm. They exchanged maybe ten words.

He’s glad to have gotten his degree, but it’s been a misery watching his old teammates and rivals — Motoya, Wakatoshi, Atsumu — rise without him. He’s worked as hard as they have, and he wants his turn onstage.

Upon graduation, he receives offers from five teams, three of them in division one, but once he sends them his mandatory medical history disclosure, only one wants to take a chance on him: an up-and-coming team called the MSBY Black Jackals. Their starting setter is Miya Atsumu. Kiyoomi doesn’t believe in fate — how could he, when it’s been so cruel to him? — but it feels like destiny when he puts his possessions in a suitcase and gets on the Shinkansen to Osaka.

Bokuto Koutarou is the first person to greet him when he shows up at practice. He’s as loud and immature as ever, though Kiyoomi notes the gold ring on his finger. He doesn’t ask, but he pictures him married to some fit, blonde woman. Hinata Shouyou is right behind him and just as loud. Kiyoomi has never played against him or with him, but he feels he knows him well. He’s thankful he didn’t fall in love with him, or he’d be choking on sunflowers.

A hand clamps down on his shoulder. “Omi-kun. Welcome.” He’s too close, breath dusting Kiyoomi’s ear, and before Kiyoomi can think he’s thrown him off, lurching away.

Atsumu holds up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. Forgot about the germ thing.”

Kiyoomi tries to speak, but his throat is wrapped in vines. It’s a more visceral reaction than he’s used to, but then again, Atsumu’s never touched him before. He grunts out something that sounds like _I’m fine._

“Ya sure sound fine,” Atsumu says, sarcastic. “Anyway, how was university, or whatever the hell ya been doin’ for the past four years?”

“I’ve been doing what you’ve been doing,” Kiyoomi snaps, panic rising. “Playing volleyball.” Atsumu’s hair is different. He must be getting it done professionally, because it’s no longer the colours of the petals Kiyoomi coughs up, but a softer, more natural-looking blonde. The rest of him is different, too; he’s filled out, he’s not as skinny as he was in high school (though Kiyoomi is), but it’s clearly all muscle. There’s a leaf stuck in Kiyoomi’s throat. He tries to swallow.

“I hope ya haven’t forgotten my rules.” Atsumu leans closer; Hinata and Bokuto have disappeared. “My sets are good. No bitchin’ about ‘em. You want me to change somethin’, ask, but otherwise, no complainin’.”

The leaf forces its way up. Kiyoomi has to get away from him. “Whatever,” he says, mumble-mouthed, and stalks off. If he says anything else, he’ll give himself up.

“Welcome to the team, Omi-kun!” Atsumu calls after him, but his tone is biting.

Atsumu’s no more pleasant than he was seven years ago. He’s still a cocky jerk, still too hot for his own good. He has both a superiority complex and a chip on his shoulder, and Kiyoomi wishes he could hate him.

“There’s been some development.” He has a new doctor now, in Osaka. He’s less pushy, more respectful of Kiyoomi’s choices. It doesn’t make bad news any better.

He waves the pages containing Kiyoomi’s blood test results at him. “Your kidneys are working too hard.”

He went years with no expiration date in sight, and now, three months after joining the team, three months of seeing Atsumu near daily, talking to him (or trying to, when he doesn’t gag), _smelling_ him, when he gets too close, and he’s—

“How long do I have? Without surgery.”

“A year, though I’d like to operate long before that to minimize the risks. We could set a date today—”

“Not yet.” Kiyoomi closes in on himself. “Just… not yet.”

He’s late to practice after his appointment, nodding to Coach Foster as he joins the team in the gym. Foster’s aunt was the first person in Canada to die of Hanahaki, which is probably the only reason Kiyoomi has his spot on the team. He wants to see Kiyoomi flourish.

The rest of the team thinks he has dental issues, severely impacted wisdom teeth that are going to need major surgery to remove, and that’s why he misses so much practice. It’s why Atsumu raises an eyebrow at him and asks, “how’s yer teeth, Omi?” when he takes his place beside Hinata. He got over Kiyoomi’s awful first impression within the hour.

Kiyoomi can’t reply. He wishes they could talk. Atsumu’s a consummate extrovert, could draw Kiyoomi out of his shell with ease. It would only take time, time Kiyoomi doesn’t have. It feels unfair that he can’t get to know the man he loves.

They beat the Adlers in Sendai in November. It’s not their first victory, but it’s a personal one for all of them — Atsumu and Hinata taking down Kageyama and Hoshiumi together, Kiyoomi and Bokuto stealing the spotlight from Wakatoshi. They’re in Hinata’s hometown and he’s brilliantly happy, so for once Kiyoomi doesn’t make excuses to hide in the hotel and lets himself be dragged to dinner with everyone else.

They must have an in at the bar, because most of Hinata’s high school team is there, plus others he recognizes: Wakatoshi’s old teammates, Atsumu’s brother. The resemblance isn’t as strong now Osamu’s stopped dying his hair.

“Omi-Omi! There you are.” Bokuto’s charging at him with Akaashi Keiji in tow. “You remember Akaashi, right?”

“Of course.” How could he forget? Fukurodani, with Akaashi at the helm, knocked Itachiyama out of Nationals in his final year. “It’s nice to see you. Do you live in Sendai now?”

Akaashi frowns. “No, I live in Tokyo.”

“And you came all the way here to watch Bokuto’s game?” Kiyoomi’s not sure any of his old kouhai even watch his games on TV.

“I— yes?”

“Omi-kun,” Bokuto interrupts. He speaks slowly, like he’s talking to a child. “Keiji’s my husband.”

Kiyoomi’s glad he’s wearing his mask, because his jaw drops. Akaashi isn’t blond or particularly fit, nor is he a woman. Actually, with the thick-rimmed glasses, he looks nerdier than he did in high school. Kiyoomi didn’t know he was gay. He didn’t know _Bokuto_ was gay.

He should have, he realizes. Bokuto talks about Akaashi constantly, and he never actually _said_ he was married to a woman. Kiyoomi never asked — he was too caught up in Atsumu and his own problems to care.

“You’re okay with that, right?” Bokuto has a protective arm wrapped around Akaashi’s waist.

Oh, they think he’s frozen stiff because he’s a homophobe. “Of course I am,” he stammers. “I’m just surprised, is all.”

“Koutarou probably could have said something,” Akaashi says, glancing sideways at him.

“I did! I do!”

Kiyoomi feels a tickle in his throat. “I’m sorry. Would you excuse me?” He leaves them there, expressions blank, and stumbles towards the bar. He hopes he hasn’t gotten Bokuto in trouble.

His throat feels tight, but there doesn’t seem to be anything coming up. It’s only once he’s ordered another drink — tonic water; with the meds he’s on, alcohol would probably put him into a coma — that he understands it’s emotion clogging it, not flora.

It shouldn’t get to him like this, the knowledge that one of his teammates is in a happy relationship with a man. A few of his college friends were gay, and it’s not like he’s a stranger to love. Even his parents, despite their faults, love each other. But he can’t stop replaying it: the practiced way Bokuto put his arm around Akaashi, like he’d done it a thousand times. Kiyoomi has never seen love look so easy before. He didn’t know it could be.

Someone pushes up to the bar beside him and he flinches away, doubly so when he realizes who it is. “Hey, Omi.” Atsumu signals to the bartender, who still hasn’t brought Kiyoomi’s tonic, for refills for both of them.

_He’s warm. He’s warm he’s warm he’s warm_ is all Kiyoomi can think.

“I’m surprised yer still here,” Atsumu says. “Y’know, with all the people.”

“Right.” There’s someone sitting on Kiyoomi’s chest, or possibly reaching into it to try to crush his lungs.

“I’m glad ya are, though,” Atsumu continues. His eyes are a little glazed. “And I’m glad ya joined the team. Not just ‘cause yer a good hitter, but ‘cause I always liked ya.” He pokes a finger into Kiyoomi’s chest. “Hey, remember when ya told off that guy at training camp for shittin’ on my sets? That was—”

Kiyoomi coughs, a violent thing that feels like an explosion, and doubles over. Atsumu tries to help, puts a hand on his back, but it only makes it worse. His lungs are on fire, his chest a loaded gun. Instinct takes over and Kiyoomi rushes away, whipping his mask off as he goes. 

He doesn’t go to the bathroom, where he knows Atsumu will follow, but continues down the hallway until he finds an emergency exit. It is blessedly unalarmed, and he spills out into the alley as he starts to retch, falling to his knees. There are flowers, yes, full blooms with stems that make him gag, but bile, too, and, unmistakable even in the dark of night, blood. The sight of it sends a new wave of dizziness crashing over him, and he slumps down further, pulling the flowers out before they can choke him.

There are six, by the time he’s done. The most he’s ever brought up at once before is three, the first time he saw Atsumu fresh from the shower in nothing but a towel. He feels a strange urge to hide them, bury them, like he’s done something wrong. But who’s going to find them back here anyway?

He gets up, goes back to the hotel, and pretends to be asleep when Hinata stumbles into their room hours later. The next morning, he calls his doctor and sets a date for surgery.

Coach Foster and Motoya are the only ones he tells — Foster because he needs two weeks off to recover, Motoya because he needs someone to lie to his parents if they try to get in touch with him. He’ll tell Motoya who it was, when this is over, sate his curiosity as a thank you for all he’s done for him. Despite his generally-loose tongue, he’s never told a soul about Kiyoomi’s illness.

He spends the days leading up to the procedure online, back in his support group for the first time in years, searching for stories of what happens after.

Some people, the ones with Hanahaki for an acquaintance or near-stranger, never speak to the person again. For those who have some kind relationship with their paramour, only the romance fades. Occasionally, there is repulsion, the love that once was twisted into something sick, a protective mechanism to keep the person at bay. Kiyoomi expects the second scenario, dreads the third. He and Atsumu need a basic working relationship to function on the court. 

They could become colleagues who enjoy a drink together after a game, maybe grab the occasional meal during breaks. They might even become friends, trade stories about their families, their dates. Kiyoomi will never hold him, or kiss him, or make love to him, but Miya Atsumu will still be part of his life, at the least for the foreseeable future.

All of this Kiyoomi can live with. What he can’t accept is that Atsumu will no longer be loved.

It’s ridiculous, because he doesn’t _know_ he’s loved now. Surely someone else will love him, maybe already does — one of the girls at their games crying _Miya-san!_ from the sidelines. But no one will love him like Kiyoomi loves him, with both his mind and his body, his lungs and bones and whole useless heart.

Kiyoomi looks down. His train card and keys are already in his hand.

It’s dark and the weather’s shit as he makes his way up the open staircase outside Atsumu’s building, slipping on the rain-soaked steps. Atsumu lives on the fourth floor, but though Kiyoomi’s hands are shaking, he’s not out-of-breath by the top stair. This late in his disease, he should be wheezing.

He rings the bell. “Just a minute!” The door opens and there’s Atsumu, in a white tshirt and sweats, barefoot and crunching on chips. “Omi-kun?”

“Atsumu,” Kiyoomi says, and Atsumu clocks right away that something’s wrong, because Kiyoomi’s never called him anything but _Miya._

“Uh, ya wanna come in?” Kiyoomi nods, but doesn’t enter further than the genkan. He’s never been to Atsumu’s apartment before. It’s cleaner than he expected. It smells like him.

Seeing Atsumu dressed-down like this should be enough to make Kiyoomi choke, but there’s nothing, no tightness, no coughs. It’s like his body knows what he’s about to do.

“Hold on,” Atsumu says. “Dontcha have yer tooth thing tomorrow?”

That’s the best opening Kiyoomi’s going to get. “No, I don’t.”

“Did they change it? ‘Cause I thought—”

“There’s nothing wrong with my teeth.” He takes off his mask, as though to prove it, and clenches it in his fist.

Atsumu scoffs. “Ya’ve literally missed practice for it a million times.”

“I lied.”

Atsumu finally puts the chips down. He leans against the arm of the sofa, half-sitting. “What’s goin’ on, Omi? Why are ya here?”

“I am having surgery tomorrow,” Kiyoomi says, the words spewing out of him like so many flowers, “but it’s not on my teeth. I have— there’s—” He stops for a breath; it comes easily. “I have Hanahaki disease.”

Atsumu gasps. “Yer jokin’—”

“No.”

Half-formed questions stutter from his lips, _how did, but that’s, what kind,_ until he sifts through them and finds the right one. “Omi-kun,” he says heavily, “who’s it for?”

Kiyoomi lifts his eyes to Atsumu’s and lets him read the answer on his face.

“Yer jokin’,” he says again, weaker.

“I’m not.”

Atsumu flinches. “But that’s— that’s— it’s fuckin’ nuts, Omi!” His lazy eyes are wider than Kiyoomi has ever seen them. “All these months we been playin’ together, and ya never—”

“Not months,” Kiyoomi corrects.

“What?”

“I’ve had Hanahaki for seven years. Since we— since I met you.” Atsumu blurs, and Kiyoomi realizes he’s started to cry. “Since training camp.”

“Then why are ya tellin’ me this now?” Atsumu asks. “Yer havin’ surgery tomorrow, why the hell—”

“Because I thought you deserved to know.” Kiyoomi shuts his eyes. “I think you’re incredible, Atsumu. I think you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. And I wanted to tell you while I still can.”

When he opens his eyes, Atsumu’s staring at him, speechless. Kiyoomi has one more thing he needs to tell him.

“It’s dandelions,” he says. “Like the colour your hair used to be.”

Atsumu lifts his arms in a shrug, lets them fall to the couch with a thud. His face twists into an ugly frown. 

“What the fuck am I supposed to say to that, Kiyoomi!?”

Kiyoomi’s pain is overridden by a kind of manic feeling, and he lets out a deranged laugh. “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all.” 

He opens the door and runs.

He makes it to the street, feet pounding the pavement. The rain has gotten worse, and through the whipping wind, he almost misses the faint calls of “Omi!” behind him.

“Omi, fuckin’ wait, I’m in sandals!’ Kiyoomi stops. Atsumu is indeed wearing rubber Adidas sandals and no jacket, his shirt soaked through from the rain. He leans over, panting. “Fuckin’ long legs of yers. How was I s’posed to catch ya?”

“You weren’t,” Kiyoomi points out.

Atsumu straightens. “Omi. Kiyoomi. How long— how long have ya got left, without surgery?”

Kiyoomi blinks; there’s rain dripping down his face, but he makes no move to wipe it. “Six months.”

“Okay.” Atsumu nods. “Okay. I can do that.”

“Do what?”

“Learn to love ya,” Atsumu says. “Six months should do it.”

“That’s not funny—”

“I’m not laughin’!” He runs a hand through his hair, slicking it back from his face. “Ya just told me ya’ve been sick over me for seven fuckin’ years. The least I can do is try—”

“It’s not something you can try,” Kiyoomi snaps. “You don’t— you don’t have feelings for me!” The plant growing inside him is proof.

“I barely know ya, Kiyoomi! Ya’ve never told me a fuckin’ thing about yerself! Ya ignore me, barely talk to me. Half the time, I think ya hate me! Maybe if ya had just— no.” It would be unkind, Kiyoomi thinks, for Atsumu to blame him for this. 

“Forget that. But Jesus, Omi, let me try to get to know ya, at least. If there’s any chance, I want to—” He breaks off. “No one’s ever told me they love me before, ya know that? Never woulda thought it’d be you.”

“Technically,” Kiyoomi says, “I didn’t tell you.”

Atsumu barks out a laugh. “Right, guess ya didn’t. Ya could have, though. Really. I wouldn’t have gotten mad, even in high school. Ya didn’t have to do this to yerself.” He shakes his head. “I mean, why did you? Did ya— did ya wanna die?”

_“No,”_ Kiyoomi insists. That’s what no one has ever understood, not his doctors, not his support groups. “Loving you— it’s the most alive I’ve ever felt.”

Atsumu sobs. He’s crying with Kiyoomi, now, his face scrunched up. He takes Kiyoomi’s hands. “Please let me try to feel that way about you, too.”

The usual shock from his touch doesn’t come. There’s no pain, no urge to be sick. Kiyoomi’s body feels light and warm despite the rain.

He wonders, the pain he’s felt all these years — what if it wasn’t from the disease? What if it was from trying to fight it?

He wonders what Atsumu’s hands would feel like on other parts of his body.

“Three months,” he says. “It’ll be too risky after that.”

“Fine by me.”

“Then, okay.”

“Good. Can we go cry in my apartment where it’s warm now?”

Kiyoomi lets Atsumu pull him along by the hand back to his building. The air smells fresh tonight, he thinks.

“So,” Atsumu says. “Dandelions, really? Ya think I’m a weed?”

Kiyoomi smiles, broad across his face. “I think you’re stubborn.”

**Four Months Later**

Sakusa Kiyoomi is twenty-two and sitting on a hospital bed, legs long enough to touch the floor. His ass is bare under the gown and sticking to the crinkly paper they put down to keep the bed clean. He thinks they need to come up with a better method.

His doctor comes in, late. He’s still pissed at Kiyoomi for cancelling his surgery on twelve hours notice, though Kiyoomi paid exorbitantly for it. Whatever. Either way, this will be over soon, and Kiyoomi won’t have to see him again.

He hangs the scans up and Kiyoomi sees the familiar shapes of his half-hidden lungs, his blacked-over heart. The doctor quirks an eyebrow. “It’s as we expected,” he says.

Kiyoomi nods. Ten minutes later, he changes, makes his next appointment with the receptionist, and goes home.

The door’s unlocked when he gets there. He lets himself in. Atsumu’s head pops out of the kitchen. “Yer back earlier than I thought.”

“Short appointment.”

“And?”

Kiyoomi takes a deep breath. It’s nice to be able to do that.

“It’s dead. The plant, not me. He gave me medication to speed up the dissolution.”

Atsumu nearly falls over with relief. “Thank fuck.”

“You said you knew it would be—”

“Doesn’t mean I wasn’t fuckin’ worried!” He reaches out to pull Kiyoomi closer, but stops short. His hands are covered in dirt.

“Were you digging my grave just in case?” Kiyoomi asks.

Atsumu snorts. “Nah. I, uh, got ya somethin’, to celebrate. A present. But ya might hate it.”

“Why would I hate it?”

“You’ll see. Just— close yer eyes, will ya?”

“Fine.” Kiyoomi shuts them. He feels silly, standing there.

“Careful, it’s heavy.” Something round and ceramic slides into his hands. “Okay. Open.”

He does. He’s holding an earthenware pot full of flowers, purple blooms so dark they’re almost black.

“There’s a flower shop down the street. I hope it’s not too—”

“They’re beautiful,” Kiyoomi says, cutting him off. “What kind are they?”

“Black dahlias.” Atsumu smiles, a tiny, hopeful thing. “They reminded me of you.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at kyrstin.tumblr.com.


End file.
